


Lena, Lena

by MaxStef



Series: All The Queers of Champaign, IL [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Introspection, One Shot, a trans exploration of gender, tw: transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 14:32:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16369406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaxStef/pseuds/MaxStef
Summary: "She was just a girl. Fourteen years old. Kicked out. Passed around between foster homes until she found one that cared.Too scared to dress how she wanted but too dysphoric to dress how she used to, so drowning herself in black sweaters, with her glasses too big, so no one could even think about her body or her face. So her appearance could be an enigma, like she felt as long as she was not her. As long as she had to exist as this chimera of male and female, of right and wrong, of living and dead."OR, how Lena met Luca





	Lena, Lena

Lena, poor Lena, fairy-in-a-mundane-world Lena, she’d had a tough year. She’d had a tough two years. Hell, she’d had a tough life but that was all too much to think about.  
First day in a new school, that’s tough, but it’s everyday-tough, it’s normal-tough, it’s the tough-that-doesn’t-traumatize-you tough. She wanted that kind of tough. She missed it, but, sorry, she couldn’t have it, because for her this wasn’t an everyday-tough first day of school, this was a monster-tough first day of school and debut as a girl, when she only left the last school after being chased out, like some kind of horror movie monster, like something that had no right to be, like not just a girl.  
She was just a girl. Fourteen years old. Kicked out. Passed around between foster homes until she found one that cared.  
Too scared to dress how she wanted but too dysphoric to dress how she used to, so drowning herself in black sweaters, with her glasses too big, so no one could even think about her body or her face. So her appearance could be an enigma, like she felt as long as she was not her. As long as she had to exist as this chimera of male and female, of right and wrong, of living and dead.  
Is all this too dramatic? Are we diving too deep into this girl’s psyche? Perhaps it’s better these thoughts remain private, her own. Perhaps it’s better I tell this more simply.  
Lena put her hair down that morning so she could hide behind it, as a last line of defense. When she checked herself in the mirror she didn’t think she looked like a girl, but maybe somewhat androgynous, and that was better than nothing.  
She’d emailed all her teachers two weeks ago.  
“Please call my name as ‘Lena,’” she’d asked of them, as politely as she knew how, “I would like to leave that other name behind me. Thank you.”  
Only two of them replied, assuring her that they would heed her request, from the rest, radio silence.  
But hopefully, hopefully-  
Everything was going smoother than she’d expected, though she’d expected the absolute worst. Three periods so far, and in every one of them “Lena Uzarski,” and nothing else.  
Lena Uzarski.  
Lena Uzarski.  
Lena Uzarski.  
Uzarski.  
The name of the father that had decided to stop fighting for custody the moment she started painting her nails.  
Her nail polish was black today. Bright colors were too feminine, too risky, too in-your-face. Better to stay under the radar. Of course Dad would hate it either way, but he wasn’t here.  
That was a thought she still hadn’t gotten used to after nearly a year. No Mom and no Dad and no Gerard with his violent masculinity making her even more out-of-place. He always was the good son, then. When she couldn’t even manage to be a son at all.  
There was no one like her.  
She knew this wasn’t true, objectively, but the world she saw was straight and narrow and the girls didn’t look like her but the boys didn’t either and there was nothing else, you are pink or blue, you are wife or man, you are this or you are that and the only place anyone resembled her was in jokes, and in horror movies, and in documentaries. Where she was something to laugh at or something to fear, or maybe, something to pity, and to study. And what is more isolating? What is more lonely?  
Geometry now, her worst subject, and Mr Anderson at his desk, a stocky man with a bald spot- one of the many who had not returned her email- and where to sit? Before she knew it the decision was made for her. Every group filled but the one by the door, where a kid with the side-shave and the nose-ring sat alone in all black like her. Different from her. The kind of person that scared her not as much as the jock-types congregating in the center of the room, but more than most people. The kind of person who looked bored with everything else. How insufferable.  
She should’ve been expecting it, when Mr Anderson started taking role, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but still… but still… when he got to the bottom of the list, where the “U” fell, and he read that name instead, and not the one she’d asked for, not the one she’d chosen so carefully, she was not ready. She recoiled like she had been burned, and, in a manner of speaking, she had.  
She raised her hand that shook like dry leaves in the wind, that shook like an earthquake, unstoppably, and she said “It’s pronounced ‘Lena’” in a voice that belonged to a dying creature and not to her, and a million eyes landed on her at once.  
Mr Anderson glanced up like this was nothing. “I’ll call you the name your parents gave you,” he said.  
Lena sank into the floor. She was snow melting. She was bricks falling. She was a heart the weight of a bowling ball. She was a mouth shutting, and a hand being lowered, and white-hot anxious dread coiling, tangling in her stomach.  
There was no one like her.  
She could never be normal.  
“Bullcrap,” someone called. The boy that had scared her. “If you can say Lola instead of Dolores, you can say Lena instead of [that].”  
A pretty girl with brown hair all up in a ponytail glared at him. Lola?  
“Luca, are we going to have problems again?” Mr Anderson asked, tone dripping with condescension.  
“There! You just did it again! You called me Luca instead of Lucas! I don’t think your problem is with names, you wrinkly sad-sack of-”  
“Alright, I’m calling your AP.” Mr Anderson picked up the phone, face red like a sunburn. In spite of herself, Lena nearly laughed.  
Luca did laugh, dryly, loudly, as a show of spite, or as a challenge.  
“Do it! And I'll tell them about this garbage you're trying to pull- in fact! They don't even need to come get me, I'll go myself.” And with that he stood, swung his backpack onto his shoulder, and turned to the door, giving a look in her direction as he went, a beckoning.  
She didn't have to think about it, Lena, Lena, deer-in-the-headlights Lena, before she got up and went with him.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of my own feelings about my gender bled into that one lol


End file.
